


Not everything comes easy

by AndromedianQueen



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Coming Out, Getting Back Together, Homophobia, M/M, Miscommunication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 12:31:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1858194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndromedianQueen/pseuds/AndromedianQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Geno comes out to his parents, and gets rejected. He tries to move past it. Thanks to Anton and Sidney he moves forward with his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not everything comes easy

**Author's Note:**

> So this fic takes place between the 2013-2014 season starting at the Christmas break and ending in the summer after the Penguins elimination in the Playoffs. There may be a timeline issue of there is simply too much time written between some events to happen, I apologize. Thank you to the Anon who gave me this prompt that I slightly edited.
> 
> This fic was beta'd by TicTok aka Thisisahockeyblog.tumblr.com  
> If you want to leave me a prompt i can be found at Historbee.tumblr.com

Nervousness filled Geno for the whole plane ride home for Christmas with his family.  He felt sick with nerves from the moment the wheels went up on the plane.  He has a secret that he can’t carry around anymore, he has to tell them.  Geno’s known for a long time that he wasn’t straight. He had tried to hide it for a long time, mainly by dating Oksana.  If there was a woman he could ever marry and have kids with it would be her, but it just didn’t work. He’s never been able to date a guy because of the fear of someone finding out.  It would be not fair to the guy if they have to hide it.

It hurt him to see how much hate his homeland had for people like him. Geno never expected for his actual home to hate him as much as him homeland did, he swore it was impossible. His mother was the most loving person he knew. Well, he had thought she was. He had figured that the Christmas break would be the best time to come out to her. It hurt every time she would ask about when he was going to bring a nice girl home, and start giving her grandchildren to spoil. Now that he’s thinking back, it was smart that he waited till the last day of the break to tell her, he can’t imagine how bad it would have gone if he had told her earlier.

After dinner that night Geno sat down with his parents. And did he ever let the dam bust.

“Mama, Papa, I love men. I-” Before Geno could continue talking his mother cut him off.

“No, no son of mine is a faggot. I’m not staying in a faggot’s home, we are leaving.” Geno looked to his dad to defend him but his father refused to meet his eye. They packed their things quickly and left. Both of them refusing to talk to Geno as he pleaded with them.

Geno felt like he was doing pretty well at not showing how upset he was or how he wasn’t talking to his family anymore until the moms trip. It was pretty quickly noticed when Natalia didn’t show up. Trina seemed confused when all of the moms had gathered. “Geno, sweetie, wheres is your mother?  She always shows up to these things.”

“She’s busy.” Geno answered very curtly.

The rest of the trip goes oddly. Geno does amazing on the ice, throws everything he’s got into scoring and focusing on hockey. Off the ice he’s distant, not quite following with what people are talking to him about and just going through the motions. Its not like Geno doesn’t notice the looks everyone keeps giving him or know the question that Nealsy and Sid keep almost asking but always changing the subject before they do. Geno just can’t bring himself to care about how upset and worried they are about him. Eventually it people just start writing it off as Geno preparing for Olympics and that his friends would be his enemies in a few weeks.

Geno breaks down at the Olympics. He thought he could handle how his homeland would hate hate him and how if they knew he would not be representing his homeland. He doesn’t know what causes it, he thinks it might be from seeing Sasha and Masha so happy, or maybe its from Pavel, and Ilya’s disgust at people like him; but he breaks. He comes back to his room after the USA game and just lays on his bed, he doesn’t move.  Not even when his roommate comes back. He just lays there for hours, unmoving.

The rest of the Olympics don’t go any better after his break down. Russia gets eliminated, and no one takes it well. Geno spends the night drinking with the team, trying to kill the pain of losing and at least to him, dishonoring his country. Maybe this was a form of punishment, he thought.

It has to be, he thinks as he’s listening to the news when he wakes up the next day and hears the reporter talk about how his team fucked up and how homophobic his country is. And that is the last straw for Geno, he breaks for good. He starts to cry, and shake, and for a while he swears he feel his soul leave his body because of how bad he hurts. It takes him a good hour to pull himself together. He leaves without saying goodbye to most of the team, or anyone from the Pens, or any of his other friends in the league. He just goes back to Pittsburgh and waits for the season to start back up.

While he’s back in Pittsburgh he remembers why he hates his house sometimes, the thing is massive and barren.  When he’s home alone like this and there is nothing to distract him, it makes him think of the family he’d love to raise in this house, the family he can’t have. He kind of hates himself for getting cheeky with that interviewer about not needing a wife to have children. God, he could feel the disapproval in their eyes. He’d love to have a child. Adopted, or otherwise, he doesn’t care. He just wants to be a dad and you can’t do that if you're an abomination.

The rest of the season goes okay, and Geno doesn’t have any incidents about his sexuality until they’re playing the Flyers. It happens in the game after they were shut out, the game is going hard and the guys are getting riled up when he hears it, he’s not even exactly sure what he hears. But its from one of his guys and its aimed at Giroux, “You doing better, after your midget fuckbuddy went back to Canada?”  

It must get at Giroux, because he flushes and the next time they're on the ice together Giroux’s checks are harder than normal. He almost wants to ask if the rumors are true about Giroux and Briere but its not like he’d get a response.  Hell, they’d probably tell him to fuck off.

Sid comes up to him after the game. “Hey, do you want to do something later, G?”

“Sure, has been a while, 7 sound good?”

“Yeah cool, we’ll get dinner.”

Geno showers and changes and heads home to check on Jeffrey before changing into hanging out clothes and heading overs to Sid’s. When he gets there he’s greeted by an over excited Sam barreling through the door when Sid opens it.

“Hey Sam, you miss me?” Geno coos at the dog while scratching her head.

“Of course she did, she always misses the team.” Sid says as he motions for Geno to come inside.

They spend a while talking about how the game should have gone better before eventually deciding to head out to dinner. They settle on a healthier burger place, they both order a plain burger because it's honestly the closest thing to being in their diet plans. While they are waiting for their food Geno looks around the place. It doesn’t seem like the place Sid would have found just wandering through Pittsburgh. If he did find it that way, Geno wonders why Sid was exploring this close to the gay part of the city.

“How you find this place?” Geno asks as the waiter puts down the food.

“This guy, Jared,  I used to date took me here a few times.” Sid says casually before digging into his food.

Geno just sits there for a moment as a heavy weight settles in his stomach. He finishes the meal on autopilot as he tries to understand what Sid told him. They hangout for a bit after eating but its obvious that Geno is distracted and he goes home not much later.

After that he starts to avoid Sid a little bit accidently. He honestly didn't mean to but it becomes such a problem that during a practice one of the call ups asks Nealer if “the two heads are fighting with each other”.  Geno stands there a little floored when James asks him after practice if anything is wrong. Geno tells him that no, nothing is wrong, but James doesn’t look too convinced.

It shouldn’t be too much of a shock when later that day Sid shows up at his house and demands Geno tell him what the hell is wrong.

“Is this about the whole bisexual thing?” Sid accuses, “Because I thought you were better than that!” And wow, Geno is glad he doesn’t have neighbors because Sid is yelling pretty loud right now and he’s at least 90% sure Sid would rather not have what he just said be in the papers.

“Sid, is not that, promise!  I’m not try to avoid you, just have a lot on mind right now. Trust me is not an issue, you like guys.” And he doesn’t know why on earth he says it, but he mumbles out “...Like men too.”

At first it doesn’t even register to Sid what Geno said, he just keeps ranting about how he thought he could trust Geno. But then it dawns on him what Geno just said and he stops, “Geno, can you say that again?”

“Am gay, Sid. You liking men is no problem for me.” And there's suddenly a weight off of his shoulders he didn’t realize he’d been carrying.

Sid just stares at him for a moment, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Have not told many people Sid.”

They sit down and talk for a bit. Geno tells Sid about his coming out to his family and how it made Geno pull into himself.

“So, you’ve never dated a guy?”

“No.”

“We should go out to a bar this weekend, so we can find you somebody.” Sid says, but quickly adding “But we don’t have to if you're not ready or don’t want too, I just thought that it might be nice for you to... find someone for even just a hookup.” Its easy to tell he feels awkward now with how he’s trying to shove his hands in his pockets even though its hard while sitting.

“Sound good Sid.”

Sid hangs around for a bit longer before he leaves, and leaves Geno wondering what just happened.

Three days later Geno finds himself in the back of a club that he can’t remember the name of with Sid and five of his friends who are more than a little drunk. They’ve been trying to teach him how to pick up a guy and mostly failing at it. Eventually Sid grabs Geno and says “Come on we’re going to dance.”

Once they're out on the floor Geno starts to relax, he’d been so uncomfortable, and worried someone is going to recognize who they are and take pictures, but on the dance floor he can just relax and do what feels natural. And what feels natural is his normal dancing that always comes of a little flaily looking because his limbs are so long.

Sid and Geno start going to clubs every so often and Geno has fun and so does Sid, but sometimes Geno will catch himself staring a bit too long at Sid while he’s dancing, or getting way too jealous of the guy who’s flirting with Sid, or worse wanting to grind on Sid when some other guy does it. Geno knows when he has a crush, and knows that having a crush is fine, he just needs to be a responsible adult and not act on his crush.

This plan fails, sorta. He’s managing to not hit on Sid or cockblock him when its just them at a club or if they’re with the team celebrating a win. But, the few guys Geno has hooked up with have all sorta looked like Sid, usually its barely there like they have the same nose or facial structure. But, they all do look like him.

It hits Geno one day that he honest to god doesn’t have anyone else he could talk to about his feelings for Sid, because Sid is the only person who doesn’t think he’s disgusting, and fuck. He wonders if he should tell anyone, and if so who? After thinking about he decides that maybe telling someone on the team he knows he can trust wouldn’t be a bad idea eventually.  He’s not gonna do anything right now. Though he really wants to because fuck, he just wants to grab Sid and pin him against a wall while kissing him, but he also wants lazy afternoons just lounging and cuddling with soft kisses to the forehead.

Geno really hates his luck, when he injures his foot. Because it means hes trapped on the first floor of his house while it heals. It also means that Sid keeps dropping by to make sure he’s okay and not doing dumb things that will make it worse.

Sid comes over on an off day, and spends the day doing more than he needs to for Geno and watching bad tv with him. Eventually Sid falls asleep half on top of Geno, and god he doesn’t know what to do. On the one hand he can let himself have this, tuck it away as a good memory thats also a painful reminder it never will be, or he can wake Sid up and get him to lie down somewhere else. But Geno’s never been good at self preservation and so an hour later Sid has barely moved and Geno keeps petting his hair. So because because he’s already this gone he presses a quick kiss to the top of Sid’s head. He doesn’t wake up, just makes a small noise in his sleep and moves a little.

About an hour later Geno wakes up when he hears Sid whisper a quiet “Fuck, I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“Is okay, Sid.”

“Oh, hey, do you want to go to dinner sometime?  Duper recommended this one place and I want to try it out.”

“Sure, Sid.”

And that conversation is why Geno is sitting is this restaurant convincing himself that no, this isn’t a date he’s just wishing it was, and reading way too much into the things that Sid is doing.  Sid is not flirting with him with how he’s eating his pasta, which is just obscene, Geno thinks. Nor is he flirting when he asks if Geno wants to split a dessert with him, Sid has always been a firm believer in if ‘I don’t eat the whole thing they can’t be too mad at me.’ Which is how they have ended up here, at a back table of a restaurant splitting a slice of chocolate cake, and Geno wants to explode. Because this is nice, its torturing him.

After they leave the restaurant Sid goes, “Hey, so that was fun.  We should do it again.”

“Yes was fun. Very much like date though.” Geno figures maybe Sid didn’t realize what they were doing was like they were on a date.

“Well yeah. That’s what it was, G.” Sid says, staring Geno in the eye.

“You want to date me?”

“Yeah, Geno. I really like you and it’s cool if you don’t want to date me, its whatever, we can still be friends.”  He pauses,  “So, do you want to date me?”

“Would like to Sid, but worry about how the team react.”

“Most of the team knows I’m not straight and both management and Mario knows, so if someone has an issue it can be worked out. But I get it Geno, your safety and security come first and if you don’t want to risk anything than its fine.”

“Sid, I want to date you. You sure it safe too?”

“I can’t guarantee that people won’t be dicks. But no one is going to trade you over this, or do something that could hurt you. I’m not asking for you to do anything you don’t want to.”

“Okay, Sid. We date.” Geno says and leans down to kiss Sid.

Things go pretty smoothly. But Geno’s still constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it does finally drop when about a month into him and Sid dating, Mario invites Geno over for dinner. While not unheard of for Mario to invite someone to dinner.  However, Geno knows that this is no regular dinner, this a “If you hurt Sidney, terrible things will happen to you” dinner. Geno’s pretty sure that Nathalie is laughing about this whole thing.

After dinner, Mario sits Geno down in the living room. “Look, I know you and Sidney are dating and I am 100% okay with the two of you dating; you’re both adults and I trust the both of you to not let this affect the team. But, Evgeni, Sidney is like one of  my children and I care about his happiness so if you hurt him, I will not be happy. Both you and Sidney deserve happiness, but if this doesn’t make the both of you happy then you’re doing something wrong and it needs to be fixed.”

“Would never hurt Sid on purpose.”

Geno stays for only a little longer, he thanks the both of them for letting him into their home and the wonderful dinner. When he gets home he just collapses into his bed and tries to sleep. But sleep refuses to come to Geno. He’s stuck thinking about how things could go wrong. If he hurts Sid he’s sure Mario will try to ruin him in every way possible if it won’t hurt the team.

The next day doesn’t fair much better, Geno wakes up from the too few hours of sleep he got because his phone is ringing. “Hello.” He blearily answers.

“Hello, Evgeni?” Geno knows this voice but he can’t place it while he’s half asleep. “It’s Troy, I wanted to talk to you about your relationship with my son.” Geno is suddenly a lot more awake as Troy continues to vaguely threaten Geno if he ruins Sid’s chances at being happy. After several minutes of threatening, Troy wishes Geno the best of luck in the playoffs and hangs up the phone.

Geno doesn’t know if he can do this. He thought he was okay, he really likes Sid and he loves dating him, but there’s so much pressure on him. If they’re out in public together he’s scared that someone will figure out they’re on a date, and if that happens Geno’s scared of how Russia would react to it, he could never go home. He’s scared that he’s going to hurt Sid, and what Troy and Mario will do to him if he does. On top this the stress from the playoffs makes him decide that he can’t do this anymore.

He waits until they are eliminated by the Rangers, which honestly may have made it worse. Sidney stops by Geno’s house a few hours after locker cleanout. “What do you want to do over the summer?” Sidney sounds hopeful, he sounds like he’s thought about what he wants to do with Geno over the summer. It makes Geno feel worse about doing this then he already does, but its for the best, it has to be this way.

“Am going home Sid.”

“Well I figured for a while, but I was thinking maybe one week you could come up to Cole Harbor and we could just spend sometime together doing whatever.”

“Sid, am going back to Russia for whole time off, going to play at worlds. Come back to Pittsburgh when have too.”

“But what about us? I want to see you.” Sid sounds confused and a little desperate.

“Find someone else. Plenty of people want to be with you, Sid.”

Sid just looks at Geno, and all Geno can see is the hurt and betrayal in Sid’s face. “Okay, fine.” Sid says trying to keep his voice flat but failing, he’s terrible at masking the sadness in his voice. He leaves pretty quickly after that, leaving Geno alone is his giant house.

When Geno lands in back in Russia something clicks in him where he pushes everything that isn’t hockey out of his head. Sid texts him for the first whole week he’s back. They’re random throughout the night and a few in the day, mostly small things like Good Luck in your Game but there are few that come in when it has to be past one in Canada, and Sid is tired and possibly a little drunk. The one that makes Geno’s heart hurt reads, What happened G? I’m sorry if I did something. Please talk to me.  He never responds to any of the texts they sit in his phone and after that week Sid stops trying to get ahold of him.

After Worlds and he spends a few weeks hanging around Moscow with his friends. He parties when he can it helps take his mind off of things. His parents ask him to come visit and it confuses him. They couldn’t even look at him earlier in the year and then they want him to spend a few weeks with them?

When he gets to his parents house they welcome him with open arms and are happy to see him.  Regardless, Geno feels that something is off and just not right. It takes him a few days to figure out what his parents are doing.

It happens at dinner one night, the conversation had switched to Denis and his girlfriend and how they have been together to a close to a year. “Now we just need to find Zhenya a nice girl.”

Geno goes stiff. The conversation keeps going around him. Throughout the night there are couple more times where one of his parents mentions him marrying a girl or at least dating one. Thats when he realizes that his parents are pretending he never came out to them. Geno almost wishes he could go back to before anyone knew.

His parents go to bed earlier than either him or Dennis.  They're sitting on the couch watching some late night talk show when Dennis just goes, "You know its okay, right?" Geno glances over at him slightly confused, letting his eyes flick back to the TV immediately. "I know mama and papa said some shit to you that was probably terrible and wrong. But, you know its okay to like men, right?"

Geno gapes at Dennis for a moment before speaking.  He lowers his voice to avoid any chance of their parents hearing, "How do you know? I never told you. Did mama and papa tell you?"

"Yeah,” He nods,  “They told me that you were gay. In words that I couldn't believe that they would call anyone that, let alone their son. I'm trying to make them understand that its wrong what they did to you. But I need to make sure you're okay."

"You don't hate me?"

"Listen, Zhenya, you're my brother and I love you no matter what, and I support you. You being gay doesn't change anything about you." Dennis puts an arm around Geno’s shoulders and gives him a half hug and squeezes his shoulder. They sit watching tv, comfortably quiet until the show finishes.  When its over, Geno decides he needs sleep and heads to bed. It takes him longer than usual to fall asleep and when he does he’s plagued by nightmares, when he wakes up he can’t remember them.

The next few days it’s uncomfortably tense in the house. Dennis is over a lot and keeps trying to get their parents to stop making homophobic comments, or trying to set Geno up with someone’s daughter. He knows Dennis is doing what he thinks is best but it makes Geno feel awkward and he thinks his parents are getting angry at him for “messing with Dennis’ head.” Geno decides to leave early he tells everyone it’s to visit a trainer that Sasha recommended to him. In reality, he goes back to his apartment in Moscow and sulks.

He knows what he did is fucked up. He basically told Sid he didn’t give a shit about their relationship or their friendship with the way he ignored Sid after he came back to Russia. He wants to make things better with Sid, he knows he has to fix enough so they won’t suffer on the ice, but he doesn’t feel like he could ever fix what he did to their future. He also feels that he doesn’t deserve to have Sid back like that. Sid deserves someone who isn’t going to get scared like this and leave him. Sid deserves someone who will stick by him no matter what, someone that will make Sid happy and keep him happy.

So Geno does what he normally does when he feels this shitty he throws himself in to working out, parties a bit harder than he should, and mopes. Most of his moping is spent looking at his phone and wondering should he call Sid and if he does what cold he even say to Sid to make up for him being such an asshole.

Khudobin invites him out to go drinking a few days later. It starts out pretty slow just friends having a beer then someone said something about shots and now Geno is pretty drunk leaning on Anton in the back of bar.  

“What’s had you so sad?” Anton asks Geno. Geno realizes this is why Anton invited him out. Anton is a firm believer that the best way to get a person to confess to everything is to get them hammered. And like most people Geno is proof that this plan works for Anton.

“I fucked up, Tosha.”

“I know that, how?”

“I was dating, someone, and I got scared because I’m a moron and don’t know how to have a relationship with a guy who actually cares about me.” It doesn’t even dawn on Geno that he just outed himself, but honestly he’s a little too drunk to care.

“Being scared isn’t an excuse, but its a reason. Apologize and be honest with him. Sidney loves you.” Geno looks at Anton confused. “You should learn to lock your phone, and not leave messages open. I saw them at Worlds.”  Anton continues with a shrug.  

They drink for a while longer but it doesn’t take very long before Geno is about to pass out in his seat.

“Time to take you home, Zhenya” Anton smiles and helps Geno to his feet and in a cab with Anton.

Geno wakes up the next day with the worst headache of his life and in Anton’s guest bed. He finds some aspirin and a bottle of gatorade on the nightstand next to him. He takes the aspirin and downs the bottle of gatorade before falling back asleep. He wakes up again a few hours later and feels a lot more alive, but still pretty shitty. He wanders into the kitchen to find Anton reheating some food in the microwave.

Geno slowly remembers how much of an ass he made of himself last night and how he was more than a little bit of a dumbass to tell Anton about his failure with Sidney at a very public bar. Before Geno can say anything to Anton, Anton turns to him and says, “G, I don’t care. You are my friend. Eat and then go home and call him.” Then he sets down a plate with some food on the counter.

They eat and Anton pulls Geno into hug before Geno leaves, “Have him come visit when you fix everything. I want to celebrate happy things next time.”

Geno decides he can’t do this on the phone, too much will get lost without being able to be face to face with Sid. But he does leave a voicemail on Sid’s phone before he gets on the plane to Pittsburgh, asking Sid if they can meet up and that he’s going to be back in Pittsburgh for most of the summer. He also says some stuff about how he’s sorry and how he really needs to talk to him.

When he gets off the plane in Pittsburgh he’s tired, hungry and uncomfortable in the the heat and sun that’s covering the city. He gets to his house and promptly passes out on his bed from the jetlag. He wakes up a few hours later to his phone ringing and someone knocking at his door. When he looks at his phone he sees its Sid.

“Hello?” Geno says, but before he can continue Sid cuts him off.

“G, what the hell? You don’t fucking talk to me for over a month, and then I  get phone call at some unholy hour of the morning saying you’re coming back here and that you’re sorry and that you want to talk to me. I’m not, I, just let me the hell in G. I don’t want to yell this where people could hear.”  Sid hangs up the phone and Geno scrambles out of bed to let Sid in.

Sidney is not happy by any means, anger and hurt is all over his face, and he’s standing very defensively on Geno’s front step. Geno lets him and they go to the living room. Geno is trying to think of a way to tell Sid just how sorry he is and how he did what he did because he was scared and panicked.

“Look, Geno, I get your sorry, but sorry doesn’t fix what you did to me. You threw me away as soon as the season was over like I was fucking demo that you could try out to see if you were really into guys. I can’t take that again, that's happened too many times to me and I thought you would be different! I thought I meant something to you! And know you want to say you're sorry. And you can say it all you you want but I don’t have to do anything with that apology.” Sid looks and sounds like he might cry. Geno know he fucked up but he clearly didn’t think that what he did  to Sid had happened before, or that Sid was this hurt.

“Sorry Sid. I’m not mean to hurt you, honest. I panicked! Everyone telling me ‘Don’t fuck up, don’t mess up Sid,’ or bad things happen. I was going back to Russia to play for country and scared people could tell am gay if dating you. Scared I wasn’t what you want, need. I sorry. I never meant for you to be hurt.” Geno manages to get everything out.

Sid’s quiet for a long moment before Geno dares to look at him in the eyes. The rejection and anger he feared being there isn’t, not a trace of it can be found. Geno’s also surprised by the hug that envelops him.

“I’m sorry you were scared. And I think we both messed up some. I wanted to make you comfortable as being you, but that wasn’t the support you needed. You didn’t tell me anything was wrong so I couldn’t help. I really like you G, but I don’t think this can work if you're going to leave me everytime you get scared of what could happen.”

“Won’t happen Sid. People who are not good for me don’t matter. Anton matter for getting head out my ass. You matter, you matter because you make me happy and feel good. Want to do that for you. Please go on date with me, Sid.”

“Okay, G. Let’s try again.” Sidney says with a short laugh, and gives Geno a chaste kiss on the lips.  
 


End file.
